Glass Recycling Reaches Record Levels to Support Economic Recovery

14th October 2014

Glass recycling in the first eight months of the year reached record levels in Ireland and provided further evidence of an improvement in Irish consumer confidence and the general economy. That is according to Rehab Glassco – Ireland’s largest glass recycling company which released glass recycling figures this week to mark Repak Recycling Week (13 - 19 October). There has been an increase of nearly 10 per cent in glass bottles collections, with the hospitality sector, a prime indicator for spending confidence, and glass waste from consumer products seeing the biggest upturn.

In the first eight months of 2014, on average 37 glass bottles and jars (primarily spirits and wine bottles and cans) were recycled per head of population. In the period from 1 Jan - 31 August 2014, Rehab Glassco facilitated the collection and recycling of over 82,440 tonnes or 263 million individual bottles, jars and cans. The people of Galway were the top recyclers for the third year running, with deposits of 50 bottles or jars for every man, woman and child in the city. Waterford City was the next best at recycling, with an average each of 49 items of glass recycled per person. Tesco Artane in Dublin was the busiest Rehab Glassco collection site, with 277 tonnes of glass deposited there so far this year.

David Farrelly, Rehab Glassco said, “These figures show that there is an increase in glass collected from bottle banks, but also in collections from business – especially the hospitality sector, showing a return to growth for this section of the economy. The theme of this year’s Repak Recycling week is ‘We are all in this together’ and these figures show that recycling is now part of the routine for households and businesses and we are delighted that everybody is playing their part.”

Seamus Clancy from Repak said: “Back in 1997 Ireland was one of the weakest performers in Europe at packaging recycling; Eurostat has now announced that we are now second which is a great achievement. We’re confident that between Repak, our partners our members and consumers we can make it to number one and truly deserve our reputation as the greenest country in Europe.”

Rehab Glassco continues to lead the way in glass recycling in Ireland, providing over 1,800 collection points in 23 local authority areas for use by the public, while also collecting from over 2,800 private customers such as pubs, hotel, restaurants, etc.